


Untitled due South Rodeo AU teasers (WIP)

by malnpudl



Category: due South
Genre: F/M, M/M, WIP
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-23
Updated: 2013-06-23
Packaged: 2017-12-15 20:55:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/853946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malnpudl/pseuds/malnpudl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the beginning of a big bang-length <i>due South</i> rodeo AU, with past RayK/Stella and eventual Fraser/RayK and Stella/RayV.  There's a short prequel that takes place some years in the past, and the opening scene from the present day main story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Untitled due South Rodeo AU teasers (WIP)

**Author's Note:**

> The good news is that I've done massive amounts of research and I have a solid foundation for the 'verse and characters and a general plan for the overall plot in my head.  
> The bad news is that my writing mojo is currently broken and I don't know if or when I'll get it back. I'm hoping that posting this much will help jump-start me again, but I am not able to make any promises about if or when there will be more.

**THEN**

The papers still lay where she'd left them on the kitchen table, the pen uncapped, the line for Ray's signature still blank. Ray was gone.

He had sat there, silent and unmoving, eyes locked on his own tanned and callused hands on the table in front of him, as if she hadn't said a word. He'd worn his newest jeans and a clean plaid shirt, even wiped the dust off his boots. He was dressed for an important occasion, even though he now refused to have anything to do with it. She wondered what he'd been thinking when he got dressed. It wasn't as if he hadn't known what was coming.

She'd left him there for fifteen or twenty minutes, retreating to her office in the hope that without her eyes on him, he'd sign, but obviously that hadn't worked, either. Nothing had.

A soft whicker drifted in through the open window; she crossed the room and looked out. There he was, sitting on the corral fence and watching the horses. No surprise. It'd been his idea to put a paddock and adjoining corral there; he loved having horses close to the house, on the east side where their bedroom was – had been – so he could hear them. More than once she'd awakened alone in their big bed to see him standing naked at the window, looking out at the corral where the horses dozed under the moonlit sky.

She'd never wanted to be in the horse business, not apart from the rough stock. Horses were a necessary tool of the stock contractor's trade, but that was all. Anything beyond that was a risky, costly, and time-consuming investment. She'd been in love, so she'd agreed, and now that the divorce was just one signature away she could admit, if only to herself, that she'd always been resentful over it. Then again, right from the beginning she'd set limits and budgets far below what Ray had wanted, so she wasn't the only one who'd entered into their marriage with a chip on her shoulder.

She refilled her coffee cup and then, after a moment's hesitation, took down another mug and filled it, too, doctoring it automatically to Ray's liking.

He didn't look up as she approached, didn't even acknowledge her presence until she'd reached up and rested the mug on his thigh. Only then did he look at her, accepting the coffee and holding hers, too, while she swung herself up onto the rail to sit beside him.

"I don't want your money," he said, handing her cup back to her. He sipped at his own; his smile at the taste was grim. Not such a romantic thing now, she supposed, having someone who knows how to fix you a perfect cup of coffee, not when it could be the last time she does it. She understood that, probably far better than Ray imagined. No one had ever known her as well as he did, either. It was a lot to give up.

"I know," she said. "But—"

"You want to give me a bunch of money to make you feel better," he interrupted. "You don't get to do that."

Ray had always known how to land a punch.

"I came into this marriage with my pickup truck and my roping gear, and that's what I'll leave with." He took another sip from his mug. "I don't care what you do with the rest."

"But Ray," she said, "it's only fair. The horses are worth a lot, and we wouldn't have them if it weren't for you. It's only right that you realize your share of the profits from what you helped build." She heard herself spouting financial jargon and winced inwardly. That was hardly the way to reach Ray, much less mend fences with him.

He shifted the mug to his left hand and turned to look directly at her for the first time since he'd arrived that morning. "Realize this," he said, pointing at her – always that odd, two-fingered gesture that she'd never seen from anyone else. Another thing she'd miss. One of so very many. "I'm not signing anything until you rewrite those papers the way I said."

Her head hurt, a low, dull ache to match the one she'd had in her heart for months now. "It's not right," she said, knowing that he didn't care, but she did – she knew better than to say it to his face under the circumstances, but she cared so much for him and for his future and his happiness that the weight of it, and of her failure to give him what she knew he really needed, had been crushing her for years.

The sound of a scuffle near the corral gate had them both turning to look. As usual, the black gelding was at the center of it. The horse had been trouble ever since they'd bought him – nothing serious, just rough edges, the sort of thing that got him into one minor scrape after another with the other horses and made him unprofitably time-consuming to train.

"Okay," Ray said. "I'll take one horse. And the older two-horse trailer. But that's it."

Stella knew when to give in. Ray wasn't going to bend any farther than this. She nodded. "Which horse?" she asked, already knowing the answer.

"That one." Ray gestured with his chin at the black, now standing nose-to-tail with a tall, rangy sorrel mare.

Of course. The edgy, cantankerous one that was almost certain to cost Ray more than he was worth, in the long run. There was never any doubt.

~ * ~

**NOW**

Slide, California is a long way from Inuvik, but they have a good deal in common. People here are polite with those they don't know, friendly with those they do, and most are ready to meet a stranger's eyes and smile, a dramatic contrast with the vast urban sprawl of the Bay Area that Fraser has so recently and so gratefully put behind him. It was exciting to explore San Francisco, to drink in the indecent beauty of the city and the Bay, the sailboats and the bridges and the surrounding hills. But in just a few days it exhausted him, left him hunched self-protectively against the onslaught of sensory overload and the crowded press of innumerable indifferent strangers, and when he sought escape he drove north more by instinct than by any deliberate plan.

Fraser's been lounging in the morning sun, the rough bark of a Douglas fir at his back, since an hour or so after sunrise – all the time it took for him to grab a quick shower, coax his truck into life (for the last time? it might have to be), and have a quick breakfast at the local eatery recommended by the woman behind the desk at the RV park when he checked out. He spent more time waiting to be seated than it took to order and eat, the place full of tanned and weathered men in snug, faded Wranglers and boots that were as worn from rubbing against wooden stirrups as they were worn down at the heels.

They're not in sight now, those real, authentic cowboys; they're all behind the tall wooden fence that surrounds the rodeo grounds, on the other side of the arena, moving stock around, grooming their horses, checking their tack and gear, getting ready for the day's competition.

The rodeo grounds occupy the western half of the city's only park. Well, town is probably a better word for it than city, he supposes, though at ten thousand souls, give or take – according to his waitress this morning – it's not nearly as small as it looks, with much of the population spread out in the densely wooded coastal foothills. Downtown is only ten or twelve blocks long and two blocks deep, and even as he sits here, the entire length of Main Street is being closed off for the parade that'll be starting soon.

Outside the grounds, from his spot under the tree at the edge of the lush evergreen forest that borders the north side, Fraser can survey the rest of the park. There's a long, narrow rectangle of lawn area along the road that leads into the park, just wide enough for a row of amusement park rides, carnival games, and food vendors. The equipment was already set up when he arrived, the thick, heavy electrical cables that snaked through the grass already connected, but it's only in the last few minutes that the first of the generators has started up with a deep, hoarse thrumming that will soon fill this end of the park.

Diefenbaker, naturally, is nowhere to be seen. Scrounging for food, no doubt. Some things never change. He's almost certainly lurking on the other side of the small food service building, where sides of beef have been roasting all night long over coals that carpet the bottom of the deep barbecue pit, tended in shifts by the men of the Kiwanis Club. Fraser's tree is downwind, and the light breeze is carrying the scent of succulent, slow-cooked, well-seasoned meat all the way across the park.

There's been a steady flow of SUVs and cars and trucks – lots of pickup trucks – into the park. The small parking lot is already filled, and half a dozen teenagers in orange vests have opened up the gates to the ball field and are directing the incoming traffic through them and onto the grass. The growing rows of parked vehicles aren't nearly as ragged as Fraser would've expected.

Slide is a small town, but it's the political, social, and commercial center of a population that sprawls well beyond its boundaries – much like Inuvik. This is dairy farming and timber country, and Slide is the center of its agricultural industry. On foot after leaving his truck at the only open repair shop – apparently many of the town's businesses closed down for the rodeo, except those that served the tourists – Fraser had stopped at the Chamber of Commerce booth that stood at the entrance to the park and picked up a few brochures before continuing on his way toward the rodeo grounds. The most interesting was the slim pamphlet on the region's history. Of all the millions and millions of trees he'd passed as he drove north, it said, only the tiniest fraction of a percentage were old growth. Up here, timber was a farmed crop, and except for the state park an hour or two south with the immense redwood trees that he'd driven through on his way here, craning his neck until it ached, everything else he'd seen had been cut at some time in the past two hundred years, much of it more than once. Corn and grains and vegetables grew to maturity in a few months and are harvested. Trees just take longer, about forty years – a figure that had impressed Fraser, because in Canada's timber country the same Douglas fir would take eighty years to reach commercially valuable size.

Trees grow slowly in Canada's cold climate; the big fir at Fraser's back would be over two centuries old if it stood in BC or Alberta. He looks up from the pamphlet, tipping his head all the way back, trying and failing to see the top through the branches. Less than a hundred years to touch the sky.

The shade is encroaching, and the day hasn't quite warmed enough to make it welcome yet, even though it's mid-July. This close to the Pacific Ocean, the "Sunny Slide" brochure had informed him, it rarely gets uncomfortably hot, even at the height of summer. That, too, has been a welcome relief. He's been breathing easier ever since he hit town yesterday evening, worn out from coaxing the truck to keep going, to carry him those last twenty miles to a town that might be able to service it. The fog creeping up the Eel River from the Pacific had finally made it the fifteen miles inland just as he'd arrived, and the cool, damp wind felt sweet on his face as he'd pulled the coughing, sputtering pickup into the RV park that was fortuitously located just off the freeway exit.

This morning, though, has been cool enough to make him welcome the sun's warmth, and he's just thinking about standing up to follow it when his eye is caught by a man, a cowboy from the look of him, vaulting the turnstile at the gate to the rodeo grounds. The movement looks careless, effortless, and he lands lightly on his feet, though he appears to favor his right leg for the first couple of steps. He's leaving the grounds, not trying to sneak in, so the stout, gray-haired woman unlocking the ticket booth barely bothers to glance at him, nor at the petite young woman who follows him, sidling gracefully through a gap that Fraser would've thought too narrow for anyone but a child.

"When are you going to get tired of the damn parades?" the man says, but the exasperation in his voice is countered by his good-natured grin as he looks back over his shoulder at the woman.

"The day after you retire," she shoots back, and her accent is city, not country, somewhere back east, Fraser thinks, but he can't quite pin it down. Clearly their teasing banter is a well-practiced routine. She's a pretty girl – perhaps even beautiful – her shiny brown hair tumbling down in an orderly riot from under the bright turquoise cowboy hat that's every bit as improbable as the matching skin-tight jeans, meticulously tailored western shirt, and lizard-skin boots. Her belt buckle is ridiculously large and gleams gold and silver in the sun; something that ostentatious could only have been a trophy. She must be good at what she does.

The man is a dramatic contrast, his jeans once black but now faded to deep charcoal and his boots dusty enough to make them a match; even the colors in his plaid shirt are quiet neutrals with just a hint of soft blue. His hat is black, too, and looks as well worn as Fraser's father's RCMP Stetson had after three decades of service – a thought that distracts Fraser for just a moment; he can't feel quite comfortable with having left it behind in his truck at the service station, but he could hardly have carried it with him. When he paused before getting out of the truck, turning the hat in his hands as he worried over where to store it, Dief had suggested that he wear it – clearly just another display of his lupine sense of humor, or perhaps it was simply sarcasm; with Dief it was hard to tell – but as the wolf well knew, that was out of the question.

His attention is forcibly recalled when the young woman turns her head to smile and nod at him as the two of them approach his tree, and then fails to look away, her pace slowing almost to a halt and her smile slowly broadening into something that Fraser recognizes all too easily, but has never learned to gracefully deflect. His mouth tightens into an uncomfortable smile, and he returns her nod with the briefest one he can manage.

The cowboy is two steps beyond her when he realizes he's lost his companion and turns to look for her; he's still moving down the sidewalk, backwards now, more slowly, and it's so much like a dance that Fraser can almost hear the music in his head. The man finally stops when he sees what's caught her eye. He meets Fraser's eyes and flashes him a startlingly beautiful grin, then rolls his eyes skyward, clowning, inviting Fraser to laugh with him. "Leave the nice man alone, Frannie," he says. "Parade's this way." He takes another couple of short steps backward. Fraser can still hear the music; he can't look away. He feels a hot blush start to bloom on his face, but fortunately the woman moves on, after sending him one last gleaming smile and a wriggling shrug, and the man has turned and is walking down the sidewalk beside her before Fraser's cheeks go pink. At least, he hopes so.

He stands, finally, brushing off the seat of his jeans and the backs of his legs, then taking off his flannel shirt to give it a brief shake before slipping it on again. By the time he's picked up the small knapsack that carries his few valuables, things he didn't dare leave in the truck even though most of them have little monetary worth, the man and woman are halfway to Main Street and Dief is trotting toward Fraser across the parking lot, carelessly darting between the vehicles that are still passing by in a steady stream, the waving plume of his tail a breezy banner of insouciant disregard.

Long since inured to the sight, Fraser just sets off to meet him. Dief always enjoys a parade.

THE END (for now, anyway)


End file.
